Slushpile recently presented a sporting rant that mocks annoying people who self-publish and then get way too excited about themselves. It’s a good article, though it leads to the depressing conclusion that the future of literature remains in the hands of the large robotic corporations that occasionally bestow the magic word “published” upon a tiny selection of writers. Here at LitKicks, we’ve always supported the little guys in publishing, and we’re happy to profile worthwhile new small press books, self-published books and poetry chapbooks. If you’ve got an independently published book you’d like us to review, we’ll take a look. Here are a few we checked out last month:

The Garbageman and the Prostitute by Zack Wentz is a thrill ride down transgression alley, and if you go for this kind of thing (fragmented violent narratives with creepy psychological undertones) this book will probably please you. Wentz gets high marks for energy and consistency, because every sentence seems constructed for mind-numbing impact, and the excellent artwork (here’s a sample, an animated version of the cover) neatly captures the mood. I did have trouble finding a clear plot in this book, though. I’m not sure if the plot is there or not, but I never found it. The Garbageman and the Prostitute is published by Chiasmus Press, and boasts a surprising array of endorsements from the likes of William Vollmann, Steve Aylett and Michael Hemmingson. The promo materials compare Zack Wentz to Richard Brautigan, Kathy Acker, Charles Bukowski, P. K. Dick and Thomas Pynchon. I see Acker and Pynchon here, but I don’t see the simple, clear communication of Brautigan or Bukowski.

J Milligan’s Jackfish has a great setup. A humanoid creature of some kind emerges from the ocean near Coney Island in Brooklyn, and gasps painfully to accustom himself to breathing air. Apparently this guy — the Jackfish of the title — is more comfortable extracting oxygen with his gills, which is mainly because he lives in the mystical underwater land of Atlantis. He’s on some kind of noirish secret mission, and the whole thing reads kind of like City of Glass meets Aquaman, which is not a bad thing at all. In the end, it’s not the suspense but rather the well-placed details (like the deep, jarring pain the fish-guy feels when forced to breathe air) that put this story over. Jackfish is published by Soho Press, a fairly large New York-based independent publisher that hasn’t been swallowed up by a corporation yet, at least not as far as I know.

Not Having an Idea is a slim and expressive book of poems by Californian poet Donna Kuhn. Her work has a visual and visceral sense, marrying the random psychological splices of William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg to a distinctly feminine aesthetic:

particles of goat head fencing
cardinal of slouched fencing eyehole
smear a plot of murder i don’t understand

fencing a platinum blong 4-plex
petty venders smoke up
i bend for your sandpapers
antlered sadness

Kuhn’s book is a Lulu production, and so is Dutch-booked by Warren Weappa, a longtime friend of LitKicks. This is an ambitious and openly disorganized novel about a hapless sad-sack stuck in the ambiguities of his own mind, The best example I can give of this book’s sensibility is Weappa’s comically self-defeating comments to me as he sent it: “I don’t want a review. I just want somebody in the world to read it.” Well, Weappa is getting a review whether he wants it or not, because as I explained to him in my reply, I can’t stand the responsibility of being the only person in the world to read anybody’s book. The author’s apparent agony about his book is very fitting, because the main character — like the author, an expatriate in Asia — suffers from the same endearing inability to seize the day. In the first two pages alone, he is referred to as “your antihero”, “your valueless villian”, “your working-class protaganist”, “your serial loser” and “your clueless correspondent”. John Kennedy Toole created a good book out of this type of self-deprecation (although, appropriately, he died before it was discovered). Reading Dutch-booked, I’m not sure whether to sympathize, laugh or yell at the author to shake it off.

Taking the Rest of the Week Off by Erik Linzbach is a humble, attractive chapbook that speaks clearly and simply, and I like it:

How you’ve changed
gone from the stereotype
divorce raged child
to the calm, secure
judgemental hawk,
flying high above all these
others, the rats from high school,
whom you’ll eat one by one
by one, and you’ll hate yourself
when they’re all gone,
and no one can see your
new limitless brilliance,
no one can read your
gut check, relentless prose,
and you’re once again found all alone.

Finally, it’s not a book at all, but I’ve been meaning to point you all to Bear Parade, an online poetry exhibit designed by Gene Morgan and featuring enigmatic poet Tao Lin, the self-proclaimed Reader of Depressing Books who writes behind a mask of playful innocence and never breaks character. I like the clean presentation of this poetry exhibit, and I am looking forward to Lin’s upcoming first hard copy publication, which he has promised to send me for future review.

That’s it from the indie side of the street. I also have a few titles from more established publishers to review, and this will be up soon.